Zodiac signs
Zodiac Sign Dates for All 12 Signs
The zodiac year starts with Aries on about March 20 and ends with Pisces on about March 20 the following year, and each sign lasts roughly 30 days.
What is my zodiac sign?
Your zodiac sign, or Sun sign, is the sign the Sun was passing through on the day you were born. The usual dates are a good guide, but the Sun does not change sign at midnight on the same calendar day every year. The table below shows the exact moments for 2026 and 2027, worked out from the Sun's position.
| Sign | Starts (US Eastern) | Starts (UTC) |
|---|---|---|
| Aquarius | Jan 19, 8:45 PM EST | Jan 20, 01:45 |
| Pisces | Feb 18, 10:51 AM EST | Feb 18, 15:51 |
| Aries | Mar 20, 10:46 AM EDT | Mar 20, 14:46 |
| Taurus | Apr 19, 9:39 PM EDT | Apr 20, 01:39 |
| Gemini | May 20, 8:37 PM EDT | May 21, 00:37 |
| Cancer | Jun 21, 4:25 AM EDT | Jun 21, 08:25 |
| Leo | Jul 22, 3:13 PM EDT | Jul 22, 19:13 |
| Virgo | Aug 22, 10:19 PM EDT | Aug 23, 02:19 |
| Libra | Sep 22, 8:06 PM EDT | Sep 23, 00:06 |
| Scorpio | Oct 23, 5:38 AM EDT | Oct 23, 09:38 |
| Sagittarius | Nov 22, 2:23 AM EST | Nov 22, 07:23 |
| Capricorn | Dec 21, 3:50 PM EST | Dec 21, 20:50 |
| Sign | Starts (US Eastern) | Starts (UTC) |
|---|---|---|
| Aquarius | Jan 20, 2:30 AM EST | Jan 20, 07:30 |
| Pisces | Feb 18, 4:34 PM EST | Feb 18, 21:34 |
| Aries | Mar 20, 4:25 PM EDT | Mar 20, 20:25 |
| Taurus | Apr 20, 3:17 AM EDT | Apr 20, 07:17 |
| Gemini | May 21, 2:18 AM EDT | May 21, 06:18 |
| Cancer | Jun 21, 10:11 AM EDT | Jun 21, 14:11 |
| Leo | Jul 22, 9:05 PM EDT | Jul 23, 01:05 |
| Virgo | Aug 23, 4:14 AM EDT | Aug 23, 08:14 |
| Libra | Sep 23, 2:01 AM EDT | Sep 23, 06:01 |
| Scorpio | Oct 23, 11:33 AM EDT | Oct 23, 15:33 |
| Sagittarius | Nov 22, 8:16 AM EST | Nov 22, 13:16 |
| Capricorn | Dec 21, 9:42 PM EST | Dec 22, 02:42 |
Calculated from the Sun's apparent position (astronomy-engine, tropical zodiac), rounded to the nearest minute and accurate to about a minute; almanacs such as the US Naval Observatory can differ by one minute. Each sign ends when the next one starts.
Why the dates shift from year to year
A calendar year is 365 days, but the Sun takes about 365 days and almost 6 hours (5 hours 49 minutes) to come back to the same point in the zodiac. Those extra hours pile up for three years and are then mostly reset by a leap day. As a result, the moment the Sun enters a sign moves by almost six hours each year and jumps back after every leap year.
On top of that, a moment that falls late in the evening in New York has already passed midnight in London. So the same entry can land on two different calendar dates depending on where you were born. For most birthdays this makes no difference. For the one or two days around each change, it decides the sign.
What does it mean to be born on the cusp?
People born within a day or so of a sign change often say they were born on the cusp. In astrology the Sun is always in exactly one sign, though, so a cusp birthday does not make you half one sign and half the other. It only means the calendar date alone is not enough to tell which sign it was.
To settle it, you need your birth time and birthplace. The birth chart calculator and the big three calculator use both and show the Sun's exact degree. If the Sun sits at 29 degrees of one sign or 0 degrees of the next, that is your answer.
Elements and modes of the twelve signs
Astrology sorts the twelve signs in two ways. The four elements (fire, earth, air and water) describe temperament. The three modes describe how a sign acts: cardinal signs start things, fixed signs keep them going, and mutable signs adapt and change them. Each combination of element and mode occurs exactly once, which is what makes every sign distinct.
| Cardinal | Fixed | Mutable | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire | Aries | Leo | Sagittarius |
| Earth | Capricorn | Taurus | Virgo |
| Air | Libra | Aquarius | Gemini |
| Water | Cancer | Scorpio | Pisces |
Tropical or sidereal: which dates are these?
These are the dates of the tropical zodiac, used by almost all Western astrologers and by every calculator on this site. It ties Aries to the March equinox, so the signs stay in step with the seasons.
Vedic astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, which ties the signs to the background stars. Because of the slow wobble of Earth's axis, the two systems are now about 24 degrees apart, which moves most people back by one sign in a sidereal chart. Neither is a correction of the other; they are two different conventions.
Is there a 13th zodiac sign?
Every few years a headline claims a 13th sign called Ophiuchus. The constellation is real: the Sun passes in front of it in late November and early December. But the zodiac signs are twelve equal 30-degree sections of the Sun's path, not the constellations themselves, which vary widely in size. Western astrology has always used twelve signs, and nothing about your sign changes.
Read about your sign
Each sign has its own page with its traits, its strengths and blind spots, and how it tends to show up in love and at work. For relationships, the compatibility pages list all twelve partners of a sign by the classical angle between them, and the zodiac compatibility calculator compares any two signs.